i read donna tartt's first book, the secret history, in high school. i remember staying up all night on a school night reading and read the whole thing. two days later, after i slept a little, i reread it. i've reread it many times. i love that book and many people i love love that book. everyone i worked with at borders loved that book. i remember joking with co-workers that you couldn't get hired without having read it.

despite my love, i haven't reread it in years. i wonder. were my late teens and early twenties the perfect time for me to read it? would it be the same almost 20 years later? i think i've decided i need to know. i'll be finding my copy and putting in on my nightstand. i'll reread it after i reread her new book, the goldfinch, which i just finished this morning and know i need to reread immediately.

i knew nothing about the book when i started it. i knew it was donna tartt and that people i love loved it. that, was awesome. i went into it blind, had no expectations and loved every single word. i gasped out loud multiple times. the first time all i could think of was this:

i also knew that one friend said she took her time, she wanted to climb inside the book and never come out. another friend said it was intense and that she had to take breaks. a third friend says she'll sleep when she's dead. i tried to show some restraint. i read a hundred pages before bed for a couple of nights. last night, at the halfway point and climbing out of my skin, needing to know what happens, i decided i sleep every night, books like this come every decade. if i'm lucky. i may be a little sleepy today but i'm glad i did it.

there was this old man at the synagogue, a totally inappropriate asshole. most of the time i knew he was like that with everyone but more than once he really pissed me off. he pissed just about everyone off more than once. the rabbi would say he was a pussycat. he swore like a truck driver in the synagogue. he was always rude to shawn but he'd quietly tell me later that he hoped shawn knew he was kidding; that he was a good guy. he once told me to go interview for a job at another synagogue and use the inevitable offer as leverage for a higher salary. he was a total pain in the ass and i totally dug him, most of the time. he passed away this week. right now, i'm hoping for an afterlife. he and his wife were adorable and i like to think they're together again.

epiphany. a sudden manifestation of the essence or meaning of something; a comprehension or perception of reality by means of a sudden intuitive realization; a revelatory manifestation of a divine being; january 6.

i hit save on this post and went back to you tube. i had noticed a video in the side bar that i want to watch. this one:

i don't know if you can get just how special that night was from the video. i think you can but i'm biased. it was an amazing night. it was almost the end of our first year in portland and it was great but it had been rough. things were starting to feel good though. we were starting to feel settled. i remember knowing that night, as we followed jason webley out into the street, singing along, that we'd made the right decision. because that decision led to a bunch of the decisions that led to that night, a near perfect night. and tonight, three years since we left chicago, a little over two years after that jason webley show, and just a couple of nights after seeing him again, i feel completely at home.

i have a bad habit. i love reading creepy stories on the internet. i love reading them to the point that i'm sometimes a little afraid of the dark. sometimes. they may have taken the place of regular horror movie watching for me, since horror movies tend towards lame and misogynistic these days. anyway, i love scary stories and i loved this post about them.

i love annie hall. i love bullets over broadway. hannah and her sisters? love. it. but, i don't love woody allen and i felt a little queasy watching the tribute to him on the golden globes. i wasn't the only one. there were a lot of people wrestling with their feelings about him on the internet this week. thesetwo summed it up best.

i baked this cake as muffins this morning. i'm enjoying one with my coffee while i type.

i also made black bean and butternut squash enchiladas, which were damn tasty. i cannot find the right recipe though. derp.

i have a well documented bad pop song habit. and by bad i mean so, so, good. hooks that stick in your head for weeks. currently, thanks to tap class and a previous dalliance with this particulary song, i cannot stop listening to Call Me Maybe. i guess the good news is, i know the dance i just learned two days ago in its entirety.

we're totally late to the bob's burgers party but in the last couple of weeks, we fell hard. i think the episode where louise loses her ears may be the best thing ever.

so, i've been sick since oh, january 2. that sucked. it was the third time i'd gotten sick in a few months and frankly, i didn't cope well. i was cranky and i was not enjoying the year so far. bummer since new years eve and day were great. over the past week, i was determined to feel better and snap the hell out of it. i worked a lot. i went back to tap class on both tuesday and wednesday. i made some plans with friends, got some good news and sent out some happy mail. last night, after tap class, i was giddy. i felt great, the best i'd felt in almost two weeks. it was an all around good day, a day that convinced me that i shouldn't write off 2014 just yet.

which reminds me, i didn't do an 2014 embroidery project. you didn't miss anything. i just didn't do it. i still might. i had a few conversations with friends about the 2012 and 2013 project and whether or not i was going to do a 2014. its been a couple of weird years for me and a number of my friends. there were deaths and break-ups. there was stuff. lots and lots of stuff. first, i joked that i needed to lower the bar. instead anything being possible, like it was in 2012, maybe there would just be tacos in 2014. blanket forts in 2014. more happy hours in 2014. whatever in 2014. i couldn't decide. i still can't. but i'm not ruling out the possibility. after all, 2014 is looking pretty good to me today.

be.exist; occur, take place; having the state, quality, identity, nature, role, etc., specified; used with a present participle to form continuous tenses; used with a past participle to form the passive mood; used to indicate something due to happen; used with the past participle of intransitive verbs to form perfect tenses.

about shana

shana is a wearer of knee socks, lover of pie, horror movies and shiny things. she writes about horror and other things, makes pie and shiny things in portland, oregon, where she lives with her husband, shawn (aka shampton). she is the vintage jewelry and yoyo obsessed woman behind the cookoorikoo curtain. email me at cookoorikoo@gmail.com.